Will the College really yield less than 10% of the 187 black students it accepted during regular admissions? That would be a shockingly low number. Perhaps a close read of Peter Nurnberg’s ’09 thesis on matriculation decisions would tell us if this number is typical. The 43 number for the class of 2020 is not unusual, but there is a fair amount of volatility. The last few years have been 51, 35, 64 and 59.

I believe that there is a significant gender skew on African-American admissions, with women outnumbering men. Does anyone have the exact numbers? In the class of 2010, it was 13 men and 31 women.

Any suggestions for how the College should do better with African-Americans? It seems like more ought to be done with some of the African-American faculty? If I got a private lunch with, say, Neil Roberts, I would be more likely to choose Williams. Also:

One of the great problems that Williams faces in admissions is attracting enough/any African-American applicants will Williams-caliber credentials. Partly, this is because Williams, because of its location and size, is less attractive (on average) to African-American applicants than it is to other applicants. (The same is probably true for international students). But, much more important is the intense competition for elite African-American students from schools like Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford. Almost any African-American applicant with the high school grades and standardized test scores which would place her in the normal range for academic admission (AR 1 and 2) will be accepted at one or more of HYPS. (This is not true of, say, Chinese-American applicants.) Since 90% of applicants (and probably a higher percentage of African-American applicants) admitted to the College and one of these 4 choose HYPS over Williams, this means that Williams has little choice but to accept many African-American applicants who we would not accept were they Chinese-American.

The only practical solution to convince such students to choose Williams is to make it worth their while. And the Tyng (money for graduate school and extra money while at Williams) is the best method available. Therefore, the College should award almost all Tyng Scholarships to African-American applicants, thereby luring 4-8 African-American applicants away from HYPS and to Williams each year. (With luck, HYPS won’t feel compelled to match our offers.) For legal reasons, Williams might need to make an occasional offer to someone who was not African-American, but I doubt that the Department of Justice would be making trouble against these sorts of efforts anytime soon.

19 Responses to “Class of 2021 Admissions Data III”

JAS says:

A cursory check of previous years would show you some of the the errors of your assumptions. For the class of 2020, there were only 186 admitted black students, 20 of whom were early decision, for a yield by your calculation of 0.14. Not great, but 50% better than your numbers make out.

JAS, does your point really invalidate any of the points that DDF is making here? DDF clearly is using 2021 numbers and admits “there is a fair amount of volatility”. It seems to me that you are clearly trying way too hard to find something to nitpick, when there isn’t really anything here. There are no “fake” numbers in this article.

He isn’t using 2021 numbers. He is mixing 2020 and 2021 numbers, which is just silly. If you want to project yield, I would argue that you should look at previous yields, not compare two years with substantial differences in the numbers accepted from your focal group.

Does it invalidate his points? No. Does it take away some the alarmism? Perhaps. I do think it suggests an answer to his first question: Based on the last year, the college will not yield less than 10% of admitted black students. The “shockingly low number” is likely the result of shockingly sloppy analysis.

And, Young Eph, David does this kind of thing all the time. He claims to be a data guy but then fudges numbers to fit his analysis constantly. It literally is the thing he is most well known for. (He wrote a piece several years ago claiming that the data on Iraq war civilian casualties was amazingly overbown, then the actual grownups in the room shwed up and just eviscerated his statistics in a way that would have embarrassed someone more self aware. Instead he just claimed he’d revisit them for a future article. We are all still waiting for that article But once you can’t lie about data, well ….) He manages to be an incredibly sloppy bully when it comes to numbers. He knows few people can work the data, so when he manipulates that data he knows that there is only a small percent chance he’ll get caught. But when he gets caught it never ends up being an honest mistake — it ALWAYS results in numbers favorable to his argument, as JAS reveals here. By the way, when it comes to admissions data: He wants fewer black and Hispanic students at Williams.

There were 27 African-Americans admitted to the class of 2021 early decision. I link to the College’s news release to prove that that number is accurate. There were 187 African-Americans admitted to the class of 2021 regular decision. (I link to the College’s news release that reported a 214 number, but I then confirmed with Mary Dettloff that this was a cumulative number which included early and regular decision. Because I am a nice guy, I do the math for you: 2014 – 27 = 187. I link to the College’s common data set which shows 43 African-Americans in the class of 2020.

A simple Thank You would be appreciated.

Now, I then calculate what the yield from the current pool of accepted students would have to be if the enrolled numbers are to match those for the class of 2021. This is not the only calculation that one might do and, indeed, I agree that someone ought to go through the history and calculate the actual yield in prior years. (Of course, the College actually does this, and then does not release the data publicly.)

By the way, when it comes to admissions data: He wants fewer black and Hispanic students at Williams.

That is a lie. And it is disproved in this very post! I argue that more Tyng’s should be given to African-Americans and fewer to whites/Asians. This would result in more African-Americans choosing Williams.

The purpose of the post was to calculate what the yield for the class of 2021 would have to be if the totals for various groups are to match those for the class of 2020. It was 100% accurate in that calculation.

Is that the only number that anyone might be interested in? No! I am also interested in historical yield. But that is a different thing. Just because I calculate X and you think that I ought to calculate Y does not mean that I am “silly” or guilty of “errors.”

Fine. Calculate what you want. I stand by that it is a silly calculation.i also stand by the statement that your legacy number is “made up.” And treating these numbers as reality for a series of posts which do not restate the erroneous assumptions is misleading at best.

Do you’re ally think that increasing the number of admitted black students will have no effect on the number that matriculate? That is your claim.

1) if you cared about historical yield or projected yield you would use JAS’ number. Sure, you made clear what you were calculating, but it still isn’t a number that should be used in analysis. Why would you base your yield number of students attending last year, but using students admitted this year? Just use 2020 yield and apply it forward. Thr fact that you can explain your numbers doesn’t make them sensical.

2) do you want more black and Hispanic students at Williams? You put forth a plan for how the school could recruit more in your opinion if it wanted. But is that what you want? Do you think the school should execute that plan? It feels like if that plan existed you would complain about it.

YES! In fact, I think that Williams should execute all my plans. In this case specifically, 95% of Tyng awards should be made to African-Americans, especially those who would not attend Williams in the absence of the award.

The numbers I want to see is are for the white working class. Since whites are targeted for discrimination, with the approval of the U.S. Supreme Court, I would see how that institutional bias is impacting all of William’s numbers. We just had an election where “the forgotten man” had his/her revenge. I’m curious to see how far Williams needs to change to make sure that it treats the children of the white working class with as much fairness as it treats the children of the black working class.

Williams is losing to Amherst/Swarthmore/Pomona in yielding students of color. Here is the Pomona version of your table: http://i.imgur.com/HNpigdu.png Unfortunately they don’t disclose early numbers so it’s not matching your RD yields, but one thing which is noticeable is that the yields are consistent across the board compared to Williams. Pomona’s black student yield is considerably higher than Williams’s (https://www.jbhe.com/2017/01/black-first-year-students-at-the-nations-leading-liberal-arts-colleges-2016/), and closer to its overall yield (black yield 50% overall yield 54%; Williams black yield 34% overall yield 44%). The numbers vary slightly because this source’s black numbers include international and mixed-race black students.

I’m not a Williams alum, so it’s not my place to post a blog. Recent alum of a peer LAC (at least, according to this: http://www.chronicle.com/interactives/peers-network). But I think a lot of what’s on this blog has relevance to the state of elite LACs at large, so I like reading through the posts/analyzing changes among different LACs. Kudos to Williams for maintaining such a comprehensive and well-researched blog. I’ll post comments though to try to add perspective once in a while.

I think comparative data would be great here. Unfortunately, the only peer school which breaks down admitted student numbers by race is Pomona. The others just give the full number, making comparison difficult.

It’s interesting though- Pomona has a whopping 15 point percent difference in yield compared to Williams among black students (according to the JBHE link above). It has no version of a Tyng scholarship or scholarship of any sort, actually. The article also shows that Williams lags behind its peers in getting as high a proportion of black applicants as well: only 7.6% of Williams applicants compared to 13.4% of Swarthmore applicants. There’s a quote from an older version that might point to some reasoning behind these differences: https://www.jbhe.com/2014/12/black-first-year-students-at-the-nations-leading-liberal-arts-colleges/ (Joel A. Hart, interim associate dean of admissions at Pomona told JBHE that “we had a modest increase in the number of Black applicants this past year, but we saw a dramatic increase in enrollment for Black students. We changed some of the things we do when we recruit, and we rethought our yield programs altogether last year.”) Maybe Williams needs to think about how black applicants are perceiving admitted student programs?

By the way, you don’t need to be a Williams alum to be an author for EphBlog. We have had several non-alums in past years. All you need to be is interested in writing about Williams. You would be welcome to author posts like your comment above. Anything comparing Williams and its peers is fair game!

Ah, haha. I meant the alums and students running the page, of course! You know…the whole “We are Williams Campaign”? EphBlog is Williams Too! Right. Right? I kid. I’m fine just commenting for now.

I actually pulled up some quick numbers with some of Williams peers and how their “diverse” group yield rate compares to the white/no-race indicated group, though I went by the Class of 2020 data rather than 2021. These were the only colleges I could find admitted student data for which highlighted the % of students who are from diverse backgrounds. http://i.imgur.com/QtPa0Ak.png

So interestingly, the yield difference is seen not just in Williams but other east coast schools as well. One thing that I thing is pretty telling for the ED data is how much less diverse those admits are compared to the RD pool. Those are kids who will with 98%+ certainty enroll to the college; considering Williams’s legacy and athletic commitments, it’s not so surprising that there’s a hefty gap between the two. Pomona and Carleton, on the other hand, have comparable yields between the two groups.